Even at 60, the musician wants to enthrall many more with
the magic of his flute.

ByS Kalidas

Dressed in his typical
dhoti-kurta, a jhola strung from his shoulder and paan staining his lips, you might easily
mistake him for a small-time trader, or worse, a wrestler from eastern Uttar Pradesh. And
you might well be forgiven for the gaffe; because except for the sheer brunt of his
musical genius Hariprasad Chaurasia, who turns 60 on July 1, could easily have been in any
one of those professions. As it happens, he is one of the world's most famous flautists,
having elevated the simple bamboo flute to heights it has probably never seen since the
mythical times when Lord Krishna used it to entice the lovelorn gopis (milkmaids) of
Brajbhoomi.

Sure, there have been others between then and now who also
blew a chirpy tune. Closer to our own times, there have been at least half a dozen other
musicians who ventured to equate the venu (flute) with the veena (ancient Indian lute) in
the arena of Indian classical music but with varying success. Few, however, have matched
the technical dexterity, the musical range or the popular appeal of this largely self-made
virtuoso from Allahabad.

Today, Chaurasia flits from Cuttack to Copenhagen keeping a
hectic schedule of concerts, recordings and teaching assignments. As he does so, on the
eve of his sashtiabdhapurti (60th birthday), he pauses to ponder on his musical journey
through the decades. "It is the sheer ananda (bliss) of my experience in the process
of gathering my vidya (knowledge) that comes foremost to my mind," he says, striking
a philosophical note. "Despite the march of technology and all the gadgets like
computers and tape recorders, we seem to be losing out on brain power -- our capacity to
absorb and commit to memory," he says referring to our largely oral musical
tradition. Toward this end, Brindavan dominates his mind -- not the town on the banks of
the Yamuna, but its allegorical counterpart in far away Mumbai where he plans to set up an
idyllic gurukul for deserving pupils. Till then, hotel rooms serve as classrooms, and
cassettes and recordings will have to do in place of face-to-face tuition.

His own learning was very different. Unlike many other
maestros of his generation who received classical music by way of inheritance, Chaurasia
was not born to a family of musicians or a gharana as the jargon goes. In fact, his
father, Chhedilal, was a pehalwan -- a professional wrestler -- for whom "music was
something that prostitutes and bandmasters practised". To please his father,
Chaurasia learnt stenography and kushti (wrestling) but also stealthily took lessons in
music from Pandit Rajaram -- a neighbourhood vocalist. Later, when he decided that it was
the flute rather than singing which would be his chosen medium of expression, he
apprenticed himself to Pandit Bhola Nath, a flute player from Varanasi.

In the winter of 1958, Chaurasia landed a job in All India
Radio's (AIR) Cuttack station. It was here that he met his future wife Anuradha, a
classical vocalist. When air transferred him to Mumbai four years later, he took the
metropolis by storm, playing prolifically for both the film industry and the classical
concert scene. A hardworking man, during the course of a routine day, Chaurasia would
"do a film take, record an item for the radio, play a concert in the evening and
still find time for his own riyaz (practice)", says Odissi exponent Madhavi Mudgal
who has known him since the late '60s.

In Mumbai, he made some musical liaisons that would last him
a lifetime: with santoor maestro Shiv Kumar Sharma and tabla wizard Zakir Husain. This
friendship resulted in a chartbursting semi-classical record, Call of the Valley, and
later, the brand name Shiv-Hari that provided the music to highly successful commercial
films like Silsila and Chandni. Chaurasia is very proud of his musical catholicity and
maintains, "I have no hang-ups about film music. I look forward to reaching the
massive audience it has through my popular compositions. Besides, didn't ustads like Amir
Khan and Bade Ghulam Ali also sing for films?"

Forever trying to bridge the gap between the classical and
the popular, Chaurasia sought and won the discipleship of one of India's most reclusive
classical purists, Annapurna Devi. Daughter of the legendary Allauddin Khan of

Maihars, she never performs in public and only teaches a very
small band of pupils after thoroughly testing their devotion to her over a long period of
time. "For years, I would stand at her door, only to be turned away," says
Chaurasia. "In the end my persistence paid off." But not without a price: till
then a right-handed flute player, Chaurasia had to change to playing left-handed to be
able to convince her of his sincerity. It is a pointer to his grit and will-power that
Chaurasia emerged from this ordeal the stronger, both in his own mind and the music
market.

Currently, he is the supreme master of his chosen muse and
lays his success at the feet of his guruma. But despite all the legends about Annapurna
Devi's exacting puritanism, Chaurasia's aesthetic is far from being accepted as a
classicist's ideal. His renderings of ragas tend to be too romantic for the liking of
hidebound classicists. As a Delhi critic puts it, "Although he lays much emphasis on
the serious alaap-jor-jhala sequence -- and is definitely to be complimented for it -- his
overall effect is that of light music." While this assures him immense popularity
from lay listeners, it also makes him a target of the cognoscenti.

For Chaurasia, perhaps, this is not a serious disadvantage
because his ultimate ambition is to take the bamboo flute and his music to as wide an
audience as possible. Going by the number of fans who flock to his concerts worldwide, he
might not be too far from his goal.